1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to Ethernet systems and, more particularly, to a system and method for energy savings through emulation of wake on LAN in energy efficient Ethernet.
2. Introduction
Energy costs continue to escalate in a trend that has accelerated in recent years. Such being the case, various industries have become increasingly sensitive to the impact of those rising costs. One area that has drawn increasing scrutiny is the IT infrastructure. Many companies are now looking at their IT systems' power usage to determine whether the energy costs can be reduced. For this reason, an industry focus on energy efficient networks has arisen to address the rising costs of IT equipment usage as a whole (i.e., computing devices, displays, printers, servers, network equipment, etc.).
One area in which energy savings can be realized is in the various energy states that can be defined for all or part of a system (e.g., computing device). One example of such an energy state is a sleep mode. For example, a sleep mode can be entered autonomously by a computing device. While this sleep mode produces energy savings in the computing device itself, what is needed is a mechanism for saving energy on a client interface during sleep modes.